22 August 2006

Suitcase Radio Brings Fijian Women's Voices out of the Margins


22 August 2006

In the island nation of Fiji, Sharon Bhagwan-Rolls is known as a "suitcase radio" pioneer.

As founder of the non-governmental organisation femLINKpacific, she has enabled women's voices and perspectives to be heard by political leaders using a simple mobile radio kit, reports OpenDemocracy.

Initiated in 2004, the "suitcase radio" project focuses on community empowerment on the basis that unless women in rural communities are given a voice, their views will never be taken seriously by those in power.

A mobile radio station, broadcast locally using a low-power transmitter, offers a space for women to articulate and exchange their viewpoints on issues such as national reconciliation, a topic that Fiji has been grappling with in the wake of the 2000 coup that bitterly divided the country.

"If you are a sixty year old woman, or a single mother in a Fijian village being asked for the first time, what do you think? - this is an important process," says Bhagwan-Rolls.

Read the full story:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-resolution_1325/fiji_3615.jsp


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Also from the Communiqué, 22 August 2006

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